In our retirement we are have decided it is time to leave the bubble of Ithaca, New York and see what America is really about. We invite you to join us as we learn about people, places and the natural history we experience in our travels.
What to do on a rainy day? We decided it was a good day to check out the local cuisine. We are on St. Helena Island near Beaufort, SC. having lunch at the Gullah Grub Restaurant.. The Gullah Grub restaurant serves real Low Country meals that follow the Gullah traditions of eating fresh, local and in season. Owner and Chef Bill Green will cook you up some delectable local dishes.
I had there fried shrimp with potato salad and John had the shrimp gumbo. Our meals did not disappoint.
Chef Bill is an avid hunter, fisherman and gardener. He has grown his own organic rice, and serves locally sourced meat and seafood he sometimes catches himself.
We recommend that if you find yourself on the South Carolina Sea Islands in Beaufort County, you visit Chef Bill in the Gullah Grub Restaurant for some local flavor.
I found Marquette Goodwine’s story to be inspirational and thought it might interest you too. Goodwine, a native of St, Helena Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, was coronated Queen Quet, Cheiftessof the Gullah/Geechee Nation on July 2nd, 2002.
Born in 1968, Goodwine attended Fordham University double majoring in computer science and mathematics. In 1996 she left Fordham and founded of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition.
Queen Quet is a published author, computer scientist, lecturer, mathematician, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmental justice advocate, environmentalist, film consultant, and “The Art-ivist.” (quennquet.com)
Queen Quet has not only provided “histo-musical presentations” throughout the world, but was also the first Gullah/Geechee person to speak on behalf of her people before the United Nations in Genevé, Switzerland. Queen Quet was one of the first of seven inductees in the Gullah/Geechee Nation Hall of Fame. She received the “Anointed Spirit Award” for her leadership and for being a visionary.
In 2008, she was recorded at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France at a United Nations Conference in order to have the human rights story of the Gullah/Geechee people archived for the United Nations.Summit.
Due to Queen Quet advancing the idea of keeping the Gullah/Geechee culture alive, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition under the leadership of Queen Quet, worked with US Congressman James Clyburn to insure that the United States Congress would work to assist the Gullah/Geechees. Queen Quet then acted as the community leader to work with the United States National Park Service to conduct several meetings throughout the Gullah/Geechee Nation for the “Special Resource Study of Lowcountry Gullah Culture.” Due to the fact that Gullah/Geechees worked to become recognized as one people, Queen Quet wanted to insure that the future congressional act would reflect this in its name and form. As a result in 2006 the “Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act” was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by the president.
Cumberland Island is near the Georgia/Florida border, just 54 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida. It is Georgia’s largest barrier island.Cumberland Island has has beaches, dunes, marshes, maritime forests, freshwater lakes, feral horses and ruins of historic mansions originally built by the Carnegie family in the 1880s.
The first inhabitants of Cumberland Island were indigenous people who settled there as early as 4,000 years ago. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Timucua people lived there and interacted with the Spanish missionaries. Like most indigenous people at the time, their numbers were decimated by diseases brought by the Europeans. The Timucua eventually relocated to an area near St. Augustine, Florida. The English general James Oglethorpe arrived at the Georgia coast in 1733. In 1735 he made a treaty with the Creek nation, and claimed ownership of the coastal islands between the Savannah River and St. Johns River for the British.
According to the National Park Service, slavery in Georgia became legal in 1751, and the early European settlers on Cumberland Island enslaved Africans and African Americans to grow rice, indigo, and Sea Island cotton.
As the demand for enslaved African labor with rice-growing expertise increased from 1800-1865, over 13,000 Africans were enslaved and brought from the “Rice Coast” and ”Grain Coast” (Senegal to the Ivory Coast) African regions, bringing their sophisticated knowledge of rice and grain harvesting. This invaluable knowledge of rice cultivation under challenging conditions contributed to coastal Georgia becoming one of the major rice-producing areas of the period and greatly influenced the region’s demographic makeup. In fact, by 1860, over 500 enslaved people lived on Cumberland Island, outnumbering white inhabitants by a ratio of seven to one.(visitkingsland.com)
.So arduous was life that many enslaved Africans dreamt of escaping the system and rebelled. One such incident occurred during the later years of the War of 1812. In 1815, British troops took over Cumberland Island and all its plantations, offering freedom to the enslaved by joining British forces or boarding British ships as free persons headed for British colonies. Over 1,500 formerly enslaved people who made it to Cumberland Island from across the Coastal region sought freedom by boarding British ships to Bermuda, Trinidad, and Halifax in Nova Scotia.
There were a number of plantations on the island by the early 1800s, with the largest belonging to Robert Stafford, who enslaved 348 people at its peak. Stafford let his enslaved people earn their own money working for other plantations after their work was done, so many of them saved money. The Union Army took over the island during the Civil War and freed the enslaved people, who promptly left. After the war was over, some came back and bought land on Cumberland Island with their savings.
After the civil war ended, many wealthy northern industrialist families were drawn to the south. They appreciated the warm weather and real estate was dirt cheap. In the 1880s Thomas M. Carnegie, brother of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and his wife Lucy bought land on Cumberland for a winter retreat. In 1884, they began building a mansion, called Dungeness, though Carnegie never lived to see its completion. Lucy and their nine children continued to live on the island. The Carnegies built other mansions for the heirs and owned 90 percent of the island. During the Great Depression, the family left the island and left the mansion vacant. It burned in a 1959 fire, believed to have been started by a poacher who had been shot in the leg by a caretaker weeks before. Today, the ruins of the mansion remain on the southern end of the island.
In 1954, some of the members of the Carnegie family invited the National Park Service to the island to assess its suitability as a National Seashore. In 1955, the National Park Service named Cumberland Island as one of the most significant natural areas in the United States and plans got underway to secure it. Plans to create a National Seashore were complicated when, in October 1968, some Carnegie descendants sold three thousand acres of the island to real estate developer Charles Fraser, who had developed part of Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. Other Carnegie heirs (and members of the Candler family who also owned an estate on the Island) were opposed to further development. They joined forces with the Sierra Club and Georgia Conservancy, politicians and activists to push Fraser to sell to the National Park Foundation. They also pushed a bill through U.S. Congress to establish Cumberland Island as a national seashore. This bill was signed by President Richard Nixon on October 23, 1972 and it officially became the Cumberland Island National Seashore.
I came across this excellent resource that is part of the National Park Service. The way things are going, with Trump’s effort to whitewash history, it may not be available in the future, so I wanted to make you aware of it. Check it out.
The Reconstruction era (1861-1900) the historic period in which the United States grappled with the question of how to integrate millions of newly freed African Americans into social, political, economic, and labor systems, was a time of significant transformation. This resource maps out sites nationwide relating to Reconstruction.
According to the National Park Service, the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act was signed into law on March 12, 2019, and outlined the creation of the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network. This network, includes sites and programs that are affiliated with the Reconstruction Era, but not necessarily managed by the National Park Service. The network facilitates and reviews Reconstruction Era related research and collaboration with affiliated sites and programs through agreements and partnerships. This network is nationwide and works to provide opportunities for visitors to connect to the stories of Reconstruction.
It is the beginning of sea turtle nesting season on the Space Coast in Florida. There are four kinds of sea turtles that make the annual pilgrimage to nest here: Loggerhead, Leatherback, Green and occasionally Kemps Ridley turtles. The last three are considered endangered. The Loggerhead is now considered threatened in Florida.
Poster created by Angelene Davis
Leatherback turtles, the largest, can be up to 5 feet long and more than 500 pounds. They migrate up to 3,700 miles to breed.
Along the Florida coast, sea turtles annually make between 40,000 and 84,000 nests. Nearly 90 percent of sea turtle nesting in the U.S. occurs in Florida from March through October of each year.
Hatchlings tend to emerge from their nests in the dark and use the moonlight’s reflection on the crashing waves to guide their return. Too much light pollution from development can confuse hatchlings and cause them to walk away from the ocean.
It’s the temperature that determines the sex of the hatchlings. Warmer temperatures in the nest will result in female turtles, whereas colder temperatures produce males. There are, in fact more female turtles hatching as a result of warmer temperatures. Turtles take 25 years to reach sexual maturity, so the outcome is not yet known. It is likely that the fewer males will not be able to keep up with fertilizing all those females.
Sea turtles can live 40 to 60 years or more.
A green sea turtle in Florida covers her newly laid eggs with sand. Some researchers found increases in successful nesting rates during the pandemic when beaches were closed. PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA SMITH, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, PERMITTED RESEARCH UNDER MTP-186Hatchlings emerge from their nests in impossibly small holesWe found these turtles shells in old nests along the dunes where turtles have already hatched.
We took a beach walk this morning before sunrise to see if we could see any turtles. We did not, but we did see a beautiful sunrise.
The Seminoles of Florida call themselves the “Unconquered People,” descendants of just 300 Indians who managed to elude capture by the U.S. army in the 19th century. Today, more than 2,000 live on six reservations in the state – located in Hollywood, Big Cypress, Brighton, Immokalee, Ft.Pierce, and Tampa.
According to the Seminole Nation website (semtribe.com) the addition of two new reservations (Tampa and Immokalee) brought Seminole federal trust holdings in Florida to more than 90,000 acres. The opening of a new hotel (Sheraton Tampa East), entry into the lucrative citrus market, opening of the new Ahfachkee Indian School, development of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum and Kissimmee-Billie Swamp Safari tourist attraction and the expansion of the profitable smoke shops and gaming enterprises have brought the Seminoles closer to their stated goal of self-reliance.
Today, most Tribal members are afforded modern housing and health care. The Seminole Tribe spends over $1 million each year on education, alone, including grants-in-aid to promising Tribal college students and the operation of the Ahfachkee Indian School. Over 300 Tribal members are employed by the Seminole Tribe in dozens of governmental departments, including legal and law enforcement staffs. Dozens of new enterprises, operated by Tribal members, are supported by both the Tribal Council and Board. (semtribe.com)
Abiaka (Sam Jones) Seminole Leader
When the Seminole Wars began in 1812, Abiaka was already a respected medicine man of the Mikasuki tribe. By the time the wars ended, he had helped guide the Seminole through nearly five decades of war. Called both Sam Jones and “The Devil” by the American soldiers; he was a medicine man, a warrior, a spy, a strategist, and a leader. His voice was the strongest in opposing removal, and when American leaders talked about forcing the Seminole to leave Florida, the words “Sam Jones and his group will never agree to leave” were a constant. During the wars he regularly stayed away from negotiations with the American military, instead sending trusted lieutenants such as Coacoochee and Osceola in his stead. He would then go into the American camps as a fishermen selling his catch, observing and learning all that he could while being comfortably overlooked. At the end of the wars, Abiaka led the last Seminole remaining in Florida into the deep wetlands, far away from American forces and settlers. The Seminole Tribe of Florida survives today because of him. (semtribe.com) You can click here to learn more about the interesting Seminole history.
Yesterday we went to Plains, Georgia hometown of President Jimmy Carter. This tiny town, population 573, was where Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosaylnn were born, lived most of their lives, died and are buried. I gained some understanding of how this man developed such strong moral character. I think I am happy that he did not live to see what is happening now to our country, which would cause him great pain. The above photo is the one block that is downtown Plains. Down the street in the background is a peanut processing plant and in the other direction is the tiny train depot that Jimmy Carter used as his presidential campaign headquarters.
The Carter campaign chose this tiny, rustic train depot as national campaign headquarters in Plains because it was the only available building with a bathroom. Peanut processing plant in downtown Plains, Georgia.
The Jimmy Carter National Historical Park consists of Carter’s boyhood home and farm. The old high school is now the visitor center.The house the Carters lived in most recently and the grave sites on the property will be part of the National Park as well.
The Plains High School now serves as the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park Visitor Center and zMuseum. Jimmy and Rosalynn both graduated from this school.
Jimmy graduated from this school in 1941. It was called the high school but served white students from grade 1-11. There was no 12th grade. In 1941 schools were racially segregated. I believe Sumter County has always been a majority Black county, so the majority of children had to attend far inferior schools. Jimmy Carter served on the Sumter County School Board after Brown vs the Board of Education supreme court case that desegregated schools. He had to tackle the question of school consolidation and desegregation. It took him a while to decide to attack desegregation head-on. Once he did, it gave him valuable lessons that made him a much better Governor and President. Here is an interesting “ Study of Segregation, Politics, and Public Education in Sumter County, Georgia, 1930s-1970s” if you would like more information.
Jimmy Carter National Historical Park DisplayJimmy Carter National Historical Park Display
Two days ago we arrived in Americus, GA, a pretty little town (population: 15,703) just nine miles from Plains, GA, the home town of our 37th President Jimmy Carter.
We met the former Americus Mayor Bill McGowan and his wife, while stopping in for lunch at the Buffalo Cafe in Plains. They were very friendly and very humble- he had lots to say about his downtown hotdog joint and his kids but he did not mention that he was elected in 2016 to the Georgia House of Representatives as a Democrat. In fact, he managed to flip the House Blue with his win.
We learned that a favorite hotdog topping is a coleslaw and chili combo. Next time we are in Americus at lunchtime we will have to give it a try!
Here are some interesting facts about Americus. I suggest you click on the inks for some very interesting stories:
Habitat for Humanity was founded in Americus and the international headquarters is there.
Charles A. Lindbergh bought his first airplane and made his first solo flight there during a two-week stay in May 1923.
Souther Field (now Jimmy Carter Regional Airfield) was used for British Royal Air Force pilot training (1941–1942) as well as US pilot training before ending the war as a German prisoner of war camp
Shoeless Joe Jackson served as the field manager for the local baseball team after his banishment from professional baseball
Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian community, was organized near Americus in 1942 by Clarence Jordan. Its interracial nature occasioned much opposition from local residents.
The Leesburg Stockade incident occurred in 1963 when a group of African-American girls, aged 12 to 15, were arrested in Americus after trying to buy movie tickets at a theatre’s whites-only window as a form of civil protest.
You can read more about the Americus Movement, a lesser known part of the civil rights movement here.
Just five miles away from Clarkston, GA, the most diverse square mile in America (see my last post), is Stone Mountain, “the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world” according to Richard Rose, President of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Stone Mountain is the Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy, only bigger. Robert E. Lee is as tall as a nine-story building. Jefferson Davis’ nose is the size of a sofa.
Here is the ugly history of Stone Mountain according to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
“The nearly 60-year effort it took to create this monument, from its first fundraising campaign in 1915 to finishing touches in 1972, makes quite the compelling story. Historical photos show stonecutters dangling from cables and perched on swings halfway down the mountain’s 825-foot face. Carving these figures into the mountainside took courage, strength and skill. But there’s an odious side to the story.
In 1915, the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan occurred atop Stone Mountain. Klan money helped fund the monument. And the first of its three head sculptors was a Klansman, as was the owner of the mountain, Samuel Venable, whose family bought it in 1887 to run a quarry. Venable granted the Klan rights to hold meetings there in perpetuity. And for decades it did.
Two events sparked the revival of the Klan, which swept the South during Reconstruction before fizzling in the 1870s.
Fueled by anti-Semitism, the first was the lynching of Leo Frank, a Cornell graduate and Jewish superintendent of an Atlanta factory, who was convicted in a shoddy trial of the murder of a 13-year-old Christian girl. After Frank’s death sentence was commuted to life, an armed mob snatched him from prison while guards did nothing to stop it. The men drove Frank to the girl’s hometown and hung him from an oak tree. (Decades later a witness came forward and, in 1986, the Georgia Board of Parole granted Frank a posthumous pardon.)
Leo Frank
The other provocation was the Atlanta debut of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, a silent film portraying African Americans as savages and sex fiends who defiled white women, while glorifying the KKK as saviors galloping to the rescue.
On Thanksgiving night, William J. Simmons led a group of 15, including some members of the Frank lynching mob, to the summit of Stone Mountain, where they set up a flag-draped altar, opened a Bible and burned a 16-foot cross in an initiation ceremony described in Atlanta’s Stone Mountain: A Multicultural History, by Paul Stephen Hudson and Lora Pond Mirza.
The resurrected KKK targeted primarily blacks, but also Jews, Catholics and foreigners among others.
Although the idea of carving a monument into Stone Mountain had floated about for years, Civil War widow Helen Plane made it her mission. As a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, champions of the “Lost Cause” version of the Civil War, she had both the passion and the sway. Once Gutzon Borglum was chosen as the sculptor in 1915, she wrote him with a design suggestion.
“I feel it is due to the Klan which saved us from Negro dominations and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?”
Due to funding challenges and World War I, the jackhammers, drills and explosives didn’t descend upon the mountain until 1923. Borglum had grandiose visions of carving an army of Confederates in addition to the three leaders, as many as 1,000 figures sweeping across the mountain. But after a year’s work, all he’d completed was Lee’s head.
Project managers fired him and later pressed charges when he destroyed his models. Borglum fled the state and went on to carve Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota on sacred Lakota land.
Augustus Lukeman took over, but slammed into the deadline before finishing. In 1916, Venable had granted a 12-year lease to complete the carving, and time was up. The project sat mothballed for the next 36 years.
The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education integration decision and rise of the Civil Rights Movement jump-started interest in completing the carving. In 1958, under Georgia’s segregationist governor, Marvin Griffin, the state created the Stone Mountain Memorial Association and purchased the dome and surrounding land to create a memorial park.
Carving resumed July 1964 with its third head sculptor, Walter Kirtland Hancock. Eight years later it was finished.
The state’s purchase of Stone Mountain voided Venable’s agreement with the Klan, but that hasn’t stopped sympathizers and other white supremacists from making pilgrimages to their sacred ground of hate. And, it’s hard to ignore the timing of the park’s official grand opening on April 14, 1965 — 100 years to the day that President Abraham Lincoln was shot.”
Today we stopped in Clarston, GA for lunch on our way to Americus, Ga. We had some very good Ethiopian food.
All of these businesses were in one strip mall.
Known as the “Ellis Island of the South”, Clarkston, GA is a small town east of Atlanta that has been a refugee resettlement area for almost 50 years. For immigrants from countries like Ethiopia, Bhutan, Somalia, and Vietnam, Clarkston, Georgia, has been their first American home. The town has become the most ethnically diverse square mile in America, doubling in size in ten years with a 2020 population of 14,756 (2020 Census).
According to Wikipedia, Georgia is among states that has received the highest number of refugees for resettlement, and has resettled more than 37,000 refugees since 1993. Clarkston receives a large portion of these refugees, but arrivals have gradually declined yearly since 2016. In 2016, then Georgia Governor Nathan Deal issued and then reneged on an executive order attempting to cease influx of Syrian refugees into the state. Additionally, as of 2019 federal funding for refugee programs has decreased and executive orders have been issued that allow states increased authority to limit resettlement, which has resulted in the downsizing of several Georgia resettlement organizations
Trump’s immigration crackdown began taking shape immediately when he took office. For immigrants already in Georgia, the orders will result in significantly increased risk of deportation.
The Trump administration has also halted new refugee admissions. But some refugee-agency leaders say Trump’s “stop work” order goes a step further, and is affecting refugees in the U.S., who rely on federal funds for housing, food and support during their first three months in the country. This foreign assistance was stopped before the Trump administration tried to pause all federal grants and loans.
Perspectives on the Road 